Tom Gilson gives a further defense of the AFR

Which Laws Govern?

I
t is not enough that one mental event cause another mental event in virtue of its propositional content. Someone who engages in rational inference must recognize the correctness of the principle of sound reasoning, which one applies to one's inference. Modus Ponens works, affirming the consequent does not. Our inferences are supposed to be governed by the rules of reasoning we recognize to be correct. However, can these rules of inference ever really govern our reasoning process? According to physicalism, all of our reasoning processes are the inevitable result of a physical substrate that is not governed by reasons. ¶ So we might ask this question: "Which laws govern the activity we call rational inference?" We might stipulate, for the purposes of this discussion, the idea that laws of physics are accounts of the powers and liabilities of the objects in question. If the materialist claims that laws other than the laws of physics apply to the assemblage of particles we call human beings, then those particles are not what (mechanistic) physics says they are, and we have admitted a fundamental explanatory dualism. If however, the laws are the laws of physics, then there are no powers and liabilities that cannot be predicted from the physical level. If this is so there can be a sort of emergence, in that the basic laws governing a sleeping pill will not mention that the pills tend to put you to sleep. Nevertheless, the pill's soporific effectiveness can be fully and completely analyzed in terms of its physical powers and liabilities. If this is so, then we will be rational if and only if the physical configurations of matter guarantee that we are physical, and in the last analysis, the laws of logic do not govern our intellectual conduct.

"THE ARGUMENT FROM REASON" IN THE BLACKWELL COMPANION TO NATURAL THEOLOGY, WILLIAM 

LANE CRAIG AND J.P. MORELAND, EDS. (WILEY-BLACKWELL: 2009), PP. 379-80.

redated from 2011. 

Thomas Nagel's account of reason

A redated post.

Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find with himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality... not a determination to express one's idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal or societal, but universal... and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it. The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-4.

One way we might approach some of this is to ask whether reason in this sense exists, as I claim, it must if philosophical and scientific inquiry is to be truly possible, and second, what are the metaphysical implication of the existence of reason in this sense.

Reasons, causes and ontological commitments.

A redated post. 

Explanations, causal or non-causal, involve ontological commitments. That which plays an explanatory role is supposed to exist. Therefore, if we explain the existence of the presents under the Christmas tree in terms of Santa Claus I take it that means that Santa Claus exists in more than just a non-realist “Yes, Virginia,” sense. What this means is that even if reasons-explanations do not exclude physical explanations, even if reasons-explanations are somehow not causal explanations, the naturalist is not out of the woods. The naturalist maintains that the universe, at its base, is governed by blind matter rather than reasons. So if reasons-explanations are true, we still need to know why they are true and why reasons exist in a world that is fundamentally non-rational.

Bulverism and the AFR

A redated post. (It's time to redate it one more time).

Pat Parks, who is working on a master's thesis on the AFR at Cal State Long Beach, sent a question about the relation between the AFR and Lewis's critique of Bulverism. If Bulverizing is a bad thing, then doesn't that imply that what causes our beliefs is irrelevant to the justification of those beliefs, and if that is so then doesn't Anscombe's critique of Lewis go through. Steve Lovell, who has written a dissertation on Lewis and philosophy, responded to this query by mentioning that he had covered the same issue in the conclusion of his dissertation. Steve's comments are in bold, followed by mine.

Bulverism and the Reasons/Causes Distinction
There was a method of ‘refutation’ that Lewis encountered so frequently that he felt he ought to give it a name. Bulverism, named after its fictional inventor Ezekiel Bulver, consists in dismissing a person’s claims as psychologically tainted at source, as in “Oh, you say that because you’re a man” (1941a: 181). The Bulverist’s thought is that if a person’s convictions can be fully explained as a result of non-rational factors then we need not bother about those convictions. Lewis deplored this sort of attack on our beliefs, seeing it as an illegitimate tactic which shortcuts the reasoning process. I argued in Chapter 5 that such ‘genetic arguments’ are often, but not always, fallacious. In general, we should find out whether or not a person is wrong before we start explaining how they came to be wrong. And of course the Bulverist’s game is very easy to play. If illicit motives may operate on one side of a debate, they may equally operate on the other. We do not (at least not always) clarify an issue by delving into psychology or personal history but rather by reasoning about the subject in hand.
If you try to find out which [thoughts] are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, [you may] go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
 In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. … [Y]ou can only find out the rights and wrongs by reasoning – never by being rude about your opponent’s psychology. (1941a: 180-1)



In attacking Bulverism, Lewis distinguished between reasons and causes:
Causes are mindless events which can produce other results than beliefs. Reasons arise from axioms and inferences and affect only beliefs. Bulversism tries to show that the other man has causes and not reasons and that we have reasons and not causes. A belief which can be accounted for entirely in terms of causes is worthless. (1941a: 182)
It is unclear how this last quote fits with the general critique of Bulverism. On the one hand we have Lewis saying that we can only find out the rights and wrong by reasoning and not by explaining (away) our opponents beliefs as the product of non-rational causes, and on the other Lewis appears to claim that the presence of such causes is incompatible with the presence of reasons. Is the problem with Bulverism that it fails to distinguish between reasons and causes and so presumes that one must exclude the other? Or is it that Bulverism is too quick to attribute beliefs to non-rational causes in the first place?
 The question is interesting in its own right, but it is also interesting for the light it may (or may not) cast upon Lewis’ argument against naturalism. For if the presence of a non-rational cause for a belief does not exclude the presence of reasons, it is hard to see how the naturalist’s commitment to the presence of such causes can discredit the naturalist’s beliefs. On the other hand, if these two kinds of explanation are really incompatible, we cannot claim that the Freudian critique of religious belief commits the genetic fallacy but merely that it assumes too easily that religious belief is brought about by non-rational factors. If religious belief may have non-rational determinants (may be ‘desire based’) and yet still be warranted, then surely the naturalist’s general commitment to the presence of such determinants cannot undermine his claims to knowledge. In terms of the reasoning presented in Chapter 5, we may wonder whether Lewis’ argument against naturalism cannot be rejected on the same grounds as we rejected the Freudian critique of religious belief, that it commits the genetic fallacy. If the one argument commits this fallacy, then so too does the other. Or so it would appear.
 But to commit the genetic fallacy is to take the origin of a belief to be relevant to its evaluation and then illegitimately fault the belief because of its origin. A clear entailment is that if any arguments commit this fallacy, there must be a meaningful distinction between the causal origins of a belief and the grounds of that belief. But it is at just this point that Lewis attacks naturalism. To argue that a worldview cannot accommodate the reasons/causes distinction is not to commit the genetic fallacy but to contend that within that worldview the accusation of making that fallacy would cease to have meaning. Lewis is not only not committing the fallacy, he is arguing against a view which (if his argument is correct) entails that there is no such fallacy to commit. Alan Gerwith puts the point in strikingly Lewisian terms.
[The naturalist] thesis is unable to account for the difference between the relation of physical or psychological cause and effect and the relation of logical or evidential ground and consequent. (1978: 36)
Bulverism also connects with several other aspects of Lewis’ work. In The Personal Heresy (Lewis and Tillyard 1939), Lewis argues against E.M.W. Tillyard’s view that poetry, and literature more generally, is first and foremost the “expression of the poet’s personality”, that “All Poetry is about the poet’s state of mind” and that, therefore, “the end we are supposed to pursue in reading … is a certain contact with the poet’s soul” (quoted in Schultz and West Jr. 1998: 318). According to Lewis, to read a poem as it should be read “I must look where he [the author] looks and not turn around to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles” (quoted in Duriez 2000: 162).
I look with his eyes, not at him. He, for the moment, will be precisely what I do not see; for you can see any eyes rather than the pair you see with, and if you want to examine your own glasses you must take them off your own nose. The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says ‘look at that’ and points; the more I follow the pointing of his finger the less I can possibly see of him. (Quoted in Hooper 1997: 599)
If we are to treat a person’s opinions fairly we cannot treat them as facts to be explained merely as episodes in their biography, we must consider the belief in question on its own merits. This in turn means thinking about the content of the belief and not about the belief itself. In a similar manner, to read a poem ‘fairly’ we cannot treat it merely as an expression of the poet’s personality, we must attempt to see what the poet sees and not merely to see the poet.
 Lewis’ assault on Bulverism is noted by Como (1998: 170), by Hooper (1997: 552) and by Burson and Walls (1998: 160-1) as among Lewis’ most important ideas, and its relevance to Lewis’ rejection of the Freudian critique of religious belief is obvious. As demonstrated in Chapter 5, that attempt to discredit religious belief is no more (and is perhaps less) convincing than the attempt to discredit atheistic belief in the same manner.

Steve and Pat: This is a little bit related to the internalism/externalism issue that was explored between my blog and John DePoe's. Something I have to keep emphasizing is that science depends crucially on some beliefs being *rationally inferred*. This entails a claim about how the belief was produced. If I say some people form beliefs because they perceive a logical relationship between the premises and the conclusion. That requires a nonaccidental confluence between cause and effect relations and ground-consequent relations which is prima facie very tough to square with the mechanism and causal closure of the physical. The AFR says that if physicalism is true, then this never occurs.

Contrast this with a case of Bulverizing. I offer a rational reason for believing in God, say, the AFR. You reply that I can't possibly believe in God because of the argument, I must believe because of wish-fulfillment. Then there are two problems. One arises if I claim that I came to believe in God as a result of reasoning. If I'm making that claim, then we have to ask what kind of evidence could show that this wasn't true. A brain scan maybe? Prolonged observation of my behavior? Even if I have a wish to believe, this doesn't show that the wish, and not the reasoning, caused the belief.

But what if I don't say that I myself came to believe in God because of the AFR. I don't make that kind of autobiographical claim myself, even though I have been inviting people for years to be able to make that autobiographical claim. For me, of course, it's one of a number of reasons I believe in God. Even if I am a theist because of wish-fulfilment and the AFR is an attempt on my part to rationalize my beliefs, nevertheless the argument is "out there" and has to be considered on its argumentative merits. Of course, this all presupposes that we live in a world in which at least some people at some times make rational inferences, and change their beliefs on that basis.

One can criticize Bulverism without committing oneself to Anscombe's implausible thesis that how a belief is formed is irrelevant to how the belief is justified.

I provide a link to Lovell's dissertation here:

Ben Schuldt replies to me on behalf of Carrier

Here. He also replies to Darek Barefoot here.

Sins of the physicalist literature

Back before I opened Dangerous Idea, I gave this response to physicalist critics of the AFR, on Bill Vallicella's blog.

 A lot of the physicalist literature is guilty of one or all of the following sins, which in my estimation are:
1) A dogmatic pre-commitment to materialism.
2) Changing the explanandum in order to make the physicalistic explanation possible.
3) Presuming the very ideas one is trying to explain naturalistically.
4) Issuing gigantic promissory notes to future science, when we have no idea how future science will go.

The Brain Fallacy

A redated post.

I've been revising a paper of mine that I did in England in response to Carrier, and I have added this section, on what I call the brain fallacy:

But more than that, here again we find Carrier explaining one kind of mental activity in terms of another mental activity and then explaining it “naturalistically” by saying “the brain” does it. My argument is, first and foremost, that something exists whose activities are to be fundamentally explained in intentional and teleological terms. In order for talk about the brain to play its proper role in a physicalistic (non-intentional and non-teleological in the final analysis) analysis of mental events, we have to be sure that we are describing a brain that is mechanistic and part of a causally closed physical world. What I wrote in response to Keith Parsons, who had said that we could take what in Philosophia Christi applies here as well: (Parsons had argued that we could simply take all the characteristics that I wanted to attribute to the non-physical mind and attribute them to the brain).

But we should be careful of exactly what is meant by the term “brain.” The “brain” is supposed to be “physical,” and we also have to be careful about what we mean by “physical.” If by physical we mean that it occupies space, then there is nothing in my argument that suggests that I need to deny this possibility. I would just prefer to cal the part of the brain that does not function mechanistically the soul, since, as I understand it, there is more packed into the notion of the physical than just the occupation of space. If on the other hand, for something to be physical (hence part of the brain) it has to function mechanistically, that is, intentional an teleological considerations cannot be basic explanations for the activity of the brain, then Parsons’ suggestion (and Carrier’s as well-VR) is incoherent.

I think that a many people fail to see the difficulties posed by the arguments from reason because they think they can just engage in some brain-talk (well, the brain does this, the brain does that, etc.) and call that good. I call that the brain fallacy. The question should always be, “If we view the brain as a mechanistic system in the full sense, does it make sense to attribute this characteristic to the brain?” Using brain-talk doesn’t mean that the work of physicalistic analysis has really been done.

Al Moritz's AFR

Here.

I'm interviewed on Apologetics 315

Here.

More on the AFR

II. C. S. Lewis’s argument, and mine

            In reading John Beversluis’s new edition of C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, it occurred to me that while I have developed Lewis’s argument a great deal, I have not been as explicit as I might have been in delineating exactly how my argument differs from, and develops his. Of course, Lewis didn’t invent the argument, and it has an important predecessor in Arthur Balfour, the Prime Minister-philosopher of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Lewis’s role was to introduce the argument to a popular audience, and to revise the argument in response to the criticisms of Elizabeth Anscombe.  There have been other important contributors to the argument, in particular William Hasker and Alvin Plantinga.

            At several points along the way I have introduced some structure to the argument that was not originally present in Lewis. I am certainly following Lewis’s fundamental idea in this, but a number of the nuances in the argument are my own. Explicating exactly what I have done on this might be helpful in understanding my argument.      

Naturalism and Supernaturalism

Lewis begins his discussion by distinguishing between naturalism and supernaturalism. A naturalist is someone who thinks that the privilege of “being on its own,” belongs to “the whole show,” in much the way that sovereignty, in a democracy, belongs to the people not to some particular person or group of persons. A supernaturalist thinks that there are certain real things (or One Thing) that have the privilege of existing on their own, and that other objects depend on that for its existence. Further, he distinguished a “strict materialism,” which he thinks can be refuted by the one-line Haldane quote (If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, then I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have no reason for supposing that my brain is made up of atoms.), from naturalism that is not purely materialistic, and must be refuted with a more complex argument. Lewis says that if naturalism is true, there can be no free will, because determinism would be true. He mentions quantum mechanics, but he describes quantum-mechanical indeterminacy as a “threat” to naturalism, in which the “subnatural” can invade nature “from below,” as it were. However, he expresses doubt that this kind of indeterminism will continue to be affirmed by science.

            Because of this, Beversluis responds that his argument against naturalism works, if at all, against deterministic forms of naturalism, and unless the naturalism in question is of the determinist variety, Lewis’s argument is not an argument against that. But does determinism really make a difference? In deterministic forms of naturalism, events are guaranteed by the action of non-rational causes. In non-deterministic forms of naturalism, there is brute chance instead of determinism, but do events ever happen because of reasons? It doesn’t seem as if determinism makes a relevant difference.

            I think Lewis’s exposition of the naturalist-supernaturalist distinction needs some further development for philosophical argumentation today. I ask the question of whether the basic causes of the universe are mentalistic or non-mentalistic. If the basic causes of the universe are non-mentalistic, then if we have a mentalistic explanation, such as “Smith believes in evolution, in part, because the fossil record supports it,” then there has to be some explanation underlying that one which in non-mentalistic cause-and-effect operation of mindless atoms moving in accordance with the laws of nature is what is happening in the final analysis. On the other hand, if we look at those same atoms from the standpoint of theism, we find that those particles have the powers and liabilities they do because God created them that way. Scratch far enough, and you get a mentalistic explanation, not a non-mentalistic one. It is interesting that when you look at what makes something “material” or “natural,” you end up defining “material” in terms of the absence of mental characteristics. If a naturalistic worldview is true, then reason comes late to the party, when a brain of sufficient sophistication develops. Lewis describes his argument as an argument for supernaturalism, which is fine so long as we understand that by supernatural, what we mean is that it has, at bottom, and not a non-mentalistic explanation. Richard Carrier, perhaps the Argument from Reason’s most prolific critic, puts it this way.

Hence, I propose a general rule that covers all and thus distinguishes naturalism from supernaturalism: If naturalism is true, everything mental is caused by the nonmental, whereas if supernaturalism is true, at least one thing is not.

            But what are the characteristic of the mental? I have identified four characteristics of the mental. The first mark of the mental is purpose. For anyone who denies the ultimacy of the mind, an explanation in terms of purposes requires a further nonpurposive explanation to account for the purpose explanation. The second mark is intentionality or aboutness. Genuinely non-mental states are not about anything at all. The third mark is normativity. A normative explanation must be explained in terms of the non-normative, in the mental is not on the ground level of reality. The fourth mark is subjectivity.  There is no inner perspective at the physical level.

            Hence, a naturalistic view has, on my view, three basic elements. One of them is a mechanistic, that is non-mentalistic, basic level of reality. The second is the doctrine of the causal  closure of the physical. This does not require determinism, but what it does require that nothing outside of the physical be in causal connection. The third doctrine, is the doctrine of supervenience. Whatever is not itself physical must in fact, supervene on the physical. Therefore, this conception of reality is one which prohibits skyhooks, that is, anything from a higher level that is not accounted for on the lower level.

            Having laid out these elements, we can proceed to consider what I maintain a naturalistic view has difficulty accounting for. We could begin by looking at what human rationality is, or how it is supposed to manifest itself. Atheists very often perceive themselves has having the more rational view. The claim that, instead of believing things on faith, they look at the evidence and believe only what the evidence supports. But let’s take a look at how this works. If someone, let’s say, believes in evolution because they believe the fossil record supports it, that seems to imply that one set of mental events, those involved in examining and evaluating the fossil evidence, helps to bring about that fact that the person believes in evolution. But, it looks as if, at the basic level of analysis, mental states do not play any role qua mental states. What we have to be calling an instance of mental causation has to in fact be an example of physical causation in which the real causes are in the non-mental supervenience base, not amongst the mental states themselves.

            In fact, Lewis said that all knowledge, apart from the knowledge of our sensations, is inferred from those sensations. This led Beversluis to presume that his argument is essentially committed to the idea that, for example, our knowledge that there is a tree in the quad which I see, is really inferential knowledge. He points out that Lewis doesn’t really defend this view of sensory knowledge as inferential, and it would be odd for him to construct an argument based on this kind of view. But Lewis did not have to take such a strong view of inferential knowledge in order for his argument to work. What he needs, instead, is simply to argue that inferential knowledge is essential to science, since no modern atheist is going to argue that science does not acquire knowledge at all. If you consider the process of doing a mathematical equation, or basing a belief in evolution on the evidence, you will see that if your worldview says that this never happens, then this is certainly a very serious problem. These seem to be clear cases in which one mental event cause another mental event.

An analysis of the argument from reason

This is a treatment of the argument from reason, which includes a treatment of Hasker's version of the argument. Sometimes I think Bill is one forgotten founding father of the AFR.

The beginning of my new AFR paper

                C. S. Lewis’s Argument from Reason

            Lewis’s contribution to Christian apologetics is many and varied, but one of his contributions seems to be of great contemporary relevance, and that is his argument from reason. The argument from reason is only indirectly an argument for Christianity or even for theism, but is instead an argument against one of Christian theism’s most popular rivals, and that is a doctrine called metaphysical naturalism.  In recent years, we have seen a very aggressive version of this doctrine propounded by advocates of what is today called “The New Atheism.” Of course, the atheists we have always had with us, but led by popular writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, atheists have made it their goal to eliminate religious belief in general, and Christianity in particular, from the face of the earth. At the same time, these atheists have made if very clear what they want to replace religious belief with. They want to people all over the world reject whatever religions they currently accept and embrace instead a doctrine of scientific naturalism. This effort has found its way onto sign on British buses that say “There is almost certainly no God. Now go on and enjoy your day.” To people like Dawkins, belief in the existence of God, or in Christianity, isn’t just false, it is delusional, which means it believed by its adherents in the teeth of overwhelming evidence that it is not true.  Further, they maintain that religious beliefs are not a benign delusion, it is a delusion that blocks the advancement of science at every turn, and actually leads its followers to resort to violence, as is evidenced by the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, and George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

            One of the assumptions made by the New Atheists is that they suppose that religious believers believe as a matter of faith, which to them means that believers believe in spite of the evidence. I do not know what someone like Dawkins would make of Lewis’s famous statement from Mere Christianity, in which he says “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in.” But they are quite convinced that the weight of the evidence is against religious belief, and that such faith does considerable harm.

            I noted earlier that the New Atheists not only want to make religious belief disappear, they want to replace it with a non-religious doctrine which is called philosophical naturalism. It is expressed in Carl Sagan’s famous pronouncement that “The Cosmos is all the was, or is, or ever will be.” But there is more to it than this. In the book entitled Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, (the book whose title I cannibalized in “C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea) Daniel Dennett contrasts two types of explanations, one of which he calls cranes, and the other he calls skyhooks. Cranes are bottom-up explanations, which explain the more intelligent and more complex in terms of the less intelligent and less complex. Where you have a mental explanation, you must explain that mental explanation in terms of something that is non-mental. For example, if you say that the purpose of your eye is to see, that might be an acceptable thing to say, so long as you can cash that explanation out in terms of something that is not so purposive. In Darwinian biology, if you say that the purpose of your eye is to see, what that means is that the function and survival value of the eye is that it enables the one who has it to see. Evolution will select for something that gives its possessor a survival advantage, but will not do so as a matter of a deliberate mental process. If we say that God designed you eye so that you can see, that would be, on Dennett’s view, and unacceptable skyhook, which he describes as a mind-first explanation with no underlying non-mental explanation. However, the Darwinian version of this statement is acceptable, because even though there is a mental explanation on the surface of things, it is merely a stand-in for a proper scientific explanation that excludes the mental. The mental is, according to naturalism, a system by-product of an inherently non-mental universe. It is not literally true that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side. The history of science, on this view, is the history of displacing mental explanations, at least at the basic level of analysis, with non-mental ones. Every day, in every way, we’re getting closer and close to the time when all the skyhooks are gone, and all we have are cranes.

            The argument from reason essentially says that this can’t be the comprehensive story of the universe.  Remember, atheists say that religious believers believe in spite of the presence of overwhelming evidence against what they believe. What that implies is that there is an alternative to this, namely, believing in accordance with, and because of the evidence. But if everything in the universe has to be explained from the bottom up, then can it be literally true to say “I reject belief in the existence of God because if there were a God, there would be evidence of his existence which we do not find?” In the final analysis, stuff moves not according to the laws of reasoning or logic, but according to the laws of physics, without intention or purpose. If this is so, then how is it possible to believe anything on the basis of evidence? Scientists believe what they do because they evaluate the evidence for scientific hypotheses, and accept the one which has the most evidential support. Thus, Darwin, we are told, found evidence for his theory of natural selection based on evidence taken from his observations of finches on the Galapagos Islands. Science would not exist if it were not possible to give mentalistic explanations for the activities of scientists. Hence, the ban on skyhooks has to stop when we start talking about the rational formation of beliefs, whether this is the formation of scientific beliefs based on evidence, or the mathematical underpinnings of the sciences (as both Lewis and I learned to our chagrin in school, you can’t get very far in the sciences without being good at math), or the rational consideration of the question of whether or not there is a God, or whether Christianity is true. If we explain reason in terms of the non-rational, we invariably end up explaining it away.

A note from a Christian correspondent concerning CSLDI

A redated post.

DeeJay wrote, his comments are in bold, mine are not:

Hi, I am currently reading your C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. (It is a very great book, by the way.) I have not completed the book yet, but I wanted to pose an issue that came up as I scanned the chapter third chapter, "Assessing Apologetic Arguments." I certainly do agree that it is not correct to refer to one with an opposing belief as being irrational, simply on the grounds that he or she disagrees with you; nevertheless, I do think that Christianity is true and, in my opinion, this requires certain things to follow (although I surely could be mistaken in some or all of what I am about to say).


The fact that something is true entails nothing about the people who believe that it is false. Some things are true that it is irrational to believe. If surprisingly enough, the Arizona Cardinals are the next Super Bowl winners (still a mathematical possibility), it would nevertheless be irrational to believe this.

The Bible suggests that if one is to earnestly seek the Truth then He will find God. Bertrand Russell said that he would tell God that there just wasn't enough evidence to warrant a belief in Him. I find it unlikely that God would respond by saying, "Your right. Tough luck!" If after deep and honest inspection, one is completely rational in holding a nontheist worldview, then I think we could say that that person is justified in holding that viewpoint. But I don't think the Bible would agree with that conclusion.

No one possesses perfect intellectual honesty. However, I find that I am not competent to diagnose bad faith in others (though I might know some things that might cause someone to disbelieve out of bad faith, such as a desire not to be ruled by a greater being). I am just unwilling, on the weight of my arguments, to issue charges of intellectual bad faith.

The Bible refers to the one who in his heart says there is no God as a "fool." Of course, this is not to be misconstrued by interpreting the term using modern-day assumptions.

I think some discussion of the "fool" passage has come up on this blog. I suspect it is not about atheistic philosophers like Russell, but rather refers to those who believe that God exists but do not reckon on God in their lives.

But, given that we interpret this passage (Psalms 14:1) correctly, this still is aligned with the claim that a nontheist is ultimately rational or justified in holding that belief. I say "ultimately" because I would agree that one could be prima facie justified in holding a nontheist worldview, but that under closer analysis (which would follow if one were to earnestly seek the Truth) then this worldview just doesn't hold. I think the following web page (which contains a few quotes from Greg Banhsen) helps explain: < http://members.aol.com/BaxterInstitute/Fool.html>. I'm sure you're already aware of all of this and I've only recently began to take my faith seriously, so I'm not trying to "educate" you at all here. I'm just expressing one concern I had with part of the third chapter of your book.

Looking at the evidence that I use to support belief in God (insofar as I use evidence), and here "evidence" is being used broadly, including presuppositional evidence, I would say that I do not know that it is so strong that anyone, say, Keith Parsons, if he knew all the arguments I knew, would be a theist. I don't believe reasoning takes place in a vacuum, that it is contextual in nature and rightfully impacts different people differently. People make deep world-view commitments and try to accomodate the information they have based on these, changing world-views relatively infrequently. It does happen (as it did with C. S. Lewis, and in part as it did with Antony Flew) but when it does there are more contributing factors than anyone can put in a book.

My comments up to this point had do with how I think saying one is completely rational or justified (where it is assumed they have honestly sought after the Truth) in holding a nontheistic worldview doesn't completely align with what the Scriptures have to say (although I could be wrong here, and I'm not at all claiming that you're being unbiblical or anything else "ad hominemistic"—not a word I know). I would also add that from personal experience (which has just been in the last year or so when I began taking my faith seriously—I'm 23 by the way) I've found that several nontheists seem to make crucial errors or ad hoc interpretations, which seem to trace back to their unwillingness to give up their belief. I have only debated the cosmological argument (the Kalam version) and the moral argument (or really the existence of objective morals and how that supports a theistic worldview). But, in doing so, I have come across some nontheists making, in my opinion, absurd statements. I have absolutely no problem with someone holding the types of beliefs a nontheist would hold in, say, an argument against objective morality. My issue is when I seem to soundly refute what they have said and they respond either by (intentionally?) misrepresenting my argument or simply with an inadequate response. I admit that this is not the case for all theistic arguments but for some (such as the Kalam cosmological argument, some moral arguments, and the argument from reason, to name a few) the conclusions, while they don't conclusively prove Christianity to be true, seem to rule out any serious possibility of a nontheistic worldview. But even given this, most don't accept the conclusions and still maintain a nontheistic worldview; they reject one of the premises or claim the argument is invalid. For example, some reject that there are objective morals, but when shown the logical conclusions of this worldview (and even in the face of gut intuition) they remain steadfast in their denial. Anyways, I could be wrong here, but I would just find it perplexing that God would send some to hell even though, after earnestly seeking the Truth, they were completely justified in holding their beliefs. I was just wondering what your thoughts on that were.

Yep. Nontheists make lousy arguments. So do theists. It is important to seek out the best, most mature nonbelievers if you really think your experience in debate supports these sorts of conclusions.

One last question. I was recently in a debate about morality and the existence of God. I took the an argument I had seen, modified it, and presented the following argument:



If evil exists, then an objective moral standard exist.
Evil exists.
Therefore, an objective moral standard exist.
If an objective moral standard exist, then there is a way things ought to be.
Therefore, there is a way things ought to be.
If there is a way things ought to be, then there is a design plan for things.
If there is a design plan for things, then there must be a Designer.
Therefore, there must be a Designer.


I talked about this argument recently on this blog when I discussed an argument from Plantinga, and when I posed the question of whether anyone who uses the argument from evil has to be a moral realist. The response seems to be that even if the advocate of the AFE is not a moral realist, the theist must be, and therefore the AFE can be run as a reductio ad absurdum.

As a note, the "ought" in my argument was used in a moral/functional sense (I was attempting to show that the functional sense is inherent in the moral sense), not in a deterministic sense. I noted that from a nontheistic worldview no justification could be given for why evil ought not exist, no matter how one defines evil. Many try to redefine evil in order to maintain the Problem of Evil argument. I noted that from a nontheistic perspective no justification for why evil ought not exist could be given in order to maintain the Problem of Evil as a problem at all—if evil ought to exist then there would be no problem! Many accused the beginning premise, (1) though (3), of my argument of being circular. I maintained that (3) just necessarily followed from (1), but that it was not circular because you can't reason from (3) to (1), where I believe you should be able to do if the argument was circular. Anyhow, I noted that anyone could simply deny premise (1) in order to avoid (3). Nevertheless, could you briefly analyze my argument and if I am making some errors could you clarify where and how, because I don't want to be using some faulty argument.

I would just call your attention to the past entries on this blog where the issue was discussed.

Conflating atheism with materialism

Parbouj has been making the complaint that Lewis, and those like myself who make use of his philosophical ideas, conflate atheism with materialism.

The interesting thing about that is that when Lewis himself became persuaded by anti-materialist arguments, he didn't become a theist, he attempted to avoid traditional theism by adopting an alternative philosophy that was very prevalent in his own time, namely, Absolute Idealism.


Here's what he wrote about it:

It is astonishing (at this time of day) that I could regard this position as something quite distinct from Theism. I suspect there was some willful blindness. But there were in those days all sorts of blankets, insulators, and insurances which enabled one to get all the conveniences of Theism, without believing in God. The English Hegelians, writers like T. H. Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet (then mighty names), dealt in precisely such wares. The Absolute Mind—better still, the Absolute—was impersonal, or it knew itself (but not us?) and it was so absolute that it wasn’t really much more like a mind than anyone else….We could talk religiously about the Absolute; but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us…There was nothing to fear, better still, nothing to obey.

Lewis never supposes that anti-materialist arguments (such as the argument from reason) establish theism  immediately and directly. Nor do I. I do think the my argument does establish that what is basic to reality is something mental, and that it is cannot be fully described in non-mental terms. I also think that that mental something at the base of things, is most coherently drawn out in terms of a theistic philosophy.

I have always been very explicit about this, see, for example, here.

Defending Carrier Against Me

This is a response by Carrier admirer Ben Schuldt to an early response of mine to Carrier. He uses the fallacy of composition charge against my argument.

Physicalist analyses of mental start by defining the physical by excluding the mental, but then combinations of the physical are supposed to be mental. Yet, when the physical descriptions are complete, it looks as if the marks of the mental have disappeared and have been replaced by something that doesn't look mental at all. I call this changing the subject, but Schuldt thinks that I am question-beggingly insisting on a "magical" analysis of mind. I say I am insisting on a mentalistic analysis of mind. The mental is what it is, and is not something else.

It doesn't seem that all part-to-whole inferences commit the fallacy of composition. For example, if every part of the shed in the back yard is made of wood, then the shed is made of wood, isn't it? (Even if it doesn't weigh the same as a duck).

A Youtube Attack on my AFR

At least Richard Carrier read my book. I'm not sure this guy has.

For example, he makes the simplistic "argument from computers", which I responded to in my book, and numerous times subsequently, including here. 

I am not saying that there aren't more sophisticated ways of using computer science to critique the AFR, but this is not one of them.

This is Balfour's Foundations of Belief

This contains an argument very similar to Lewis's AFR.

My interview with Backpack Radio is here

A redated post.

Darek Barefoot replies to Richard Carrier

A redated post.

Darek Barefoot has posted a defense of my book against Carrier's criticisms on the Secular Web. I've spent a fair amount of time responding to Carrier, but I really think he doesn't give the best responses to my arguments that a naturalist can produce. However, when someone put as much into a response as Carrier did, it does deserve a good response.